I’m about 18 and dating a guy who is throwing a party. I’m supposed to sleep over, and my things are in one of the many rooms in his parents’ house. There is something locked in a chamber under the hardwood floor in the dining room. Everyone who walks through there gets bumped from underneath, but they all keep drinking and pretending they don’t feel it. I am on the roof watching the wind blow naked tree branches and wondering if I’ll be kissed at all. My boyfriend doesn’t kiss, but I wish he did, even though he wears his collar popped. What year is it even? I don’t know. My hair is long though.

Around sunrise, I come off the roof. I’m tired and want my bed. Someone is helping my boyfriend put new hardwood down in the dining room. Whatever came up was reburied. He doesn’t kiss me. The guy helping him grabs my ass when I walk by. There are two guys passed out in my bed. They won’t wake up, so I can’t get them out. One is snuggling my nightshirt. All the beds are taken. There is nowhere to sleep.

I wander into the small laundry room and find a door that I think leads to the crawl space under the house. It leads to a large closet filled with canned goods – the homemade kind, in a mixture of Ball and Mason jars. There is a cot there, and it’s very dark, so I think I’ll be able to sleep. I need pitch darkness to sleep during the daytime. I think I’ll be safe, but I check to make sure the tiny door doesn’t lock. The light switch is on an exposed stud by the dryer. I don’t want to sleep in there when the light switch is outside the room, but I am so tired. So tired. Then, the kid under the dining room floor (now I know it’s some kind of really fucked up kid) is thumping again. I’m not going to sleep or be kissed.

In a time and place where men inherited rather than purchased land, the fiefdom was plagued with territorial disputes. Generations of civil war meant that young men were scarce. Thus, although I was a young woman, I served on my father’s guard.

My duty was manning the closest watchtower to the keep. Hair cropped severely short — shorter than some of the men — and leather armor helped me blend. I was trained in all manner of martial weapons, but my talent was archery. I sat atop this tower, crossbow pointed at the tree line, watching, watching, waiting, day or night depending on my shift.

I was off duty when the Vikings came. My ancient father held my arm as I led him through the market. Screams, the smell of burning wood and burning flesh, I put a hand over my father’s. “Hurry back. Bolt the doors.” I shoved him in the direction of the royal house and drew my dagger.

When I turned to head down the path to the watchtower, a fist connected with my face. I staggered back, yelling for my father to run, run. “Save yourself, my lord!” Another blow to the face, a hard kick to the hip sent me to my knees. I heard the blade as it left its sheath.

“No!” my father shouted. I looked up to see him running my way, hands up, long white beard flapping. “Do not kill my daughter!”

“Care not for me.” I coughed and spit blood. “Run, Father.”

My assailant murmured something. I awaited death but instead, received a hard lash across the back. The Viking hit me over and over with the sword sheath. Crack, crack, crack. I fell onto my face and still he struck me. He beat the armor off me, and when my skin was exposed, he kept going.

My father fell to his knees and wept. “I surrender it all. Just don’t kill her.”

The man stopped, pulled me up by my scruff of hair, and looked into my eyes. He laughed and laughed. Then, he shoved my face into the dirt and went after my father.

Zombie apocalypse. I wander around my parents’ neighborhood – down in the part of the loop where their house is – carrying a bloodstained baseball bat. I am a survivor. 

Fluffy is with me, as are a few other men. We cleared the area of zombies, but they are so widespread, so pervasive, we are never safe anywhere for long. We know of a checkpoint nearby, and all but one of the men decide to drive one of the trucks that way in hopes of finding out what is happening.

The man and I stand by my parents’ mailbox. The sky is gray, darkening as night approaches. A car comes up the drive from the neighbor’s house, and a woman and a 6 year old child get out of it. She waves an automatic rifle and a radio.

“It doesn’t look good,” she says. “I hope they reach the outpost soon. From what I’ve heard, this area is so overpopulated. They think the only way to neutralize the situation is to nuke it. I just hope they come get us, or at least give us a chance to clear the radius.”

It’s dusk now, and the man built a fire down by the hardwoods that begin the woods along the edge of my parents’ yard. I stand at the top of the yard, scanning the road, scanning how the patchy grass and moss slope at first sharply and then gently down, down to the campsite.

The child is playing, running. His mother isn’t paying attention, and he picks up the rifle. The man tells him not to touch it, and the child drops it. The safety isn’t on.

Bullets, rapid, everywhere. She’s running to the child. They are screaming, screaming as their bodies are mutilated. I throw up my arm, as if that can protect me. Dirt, twigs, bits of moss pepper my legs, and when the pop-pop-pop stops, they are dead. Dead. Shredded, empty flesh bags face down in the leaves near the fire.

The man steps out from behind an oak he used as a shield. He looks at me. “My God.” In the firelight, I see his Adam’s apple bob. Then, I hear the moaning.

“I don’t want to die,” I say. “I don’t want to be undead.”

Then, I awoke.